The present invention relates to providing remote monitoring and configuration capabilities in an electronics system and, in particular, relates to providing enhanced remote configuration and diagnostics in a fuel dispenser.
Electronic or computer-based systems commonly include remote monitoring and configuration capabilities, thereby allowing personnel, especially off-site personnel, to interact with the local system. Such interaction may relate to obtaining current operating conditions for the local system, or to obtaining stored data associated with local system operation, or may relate to providing one or more sets of operating parameters for the local system. Regardless of the specific use or requirement for remote interaction, remote access features and techniques available in various electronic systems evolve as the supporting communication technologies themselves evolve.
Today, there are many classes of electronic devices, ranging from standard desktop computing devices to those categorized as having xe2x80x9cembeddedxe2x80x9d computers for automated control, that leverage standard, ubiquitous Internet technology to allow remote access. It is a straightforward and increasingly common practice to embed Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networking and a service, such as a Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), in a device to allow it to be managed via any Hyper-Text Mark-Up Language (HTML) compliant Web browser. This is advantageous for several reasons. First, such devices can be managed locally and directly by many Web browser applications using direct connection interfaces, including but not limited to the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), which allows TCP/IP communication over standard RS-232-compliant serial interfaces commonly found on portable computing devices. Second, remote management of such devices is achievable over any networkxe2x80x94including the Internetxe2x80x94as long as it provides the TCP/IP interface.
For example, pending application Ser. No. 08/896,988, commonly assigned with the present invention, relates, in part, to an interactive file dispensing system in which one or more fuel dispensers interact with a server. Each fuel dispenser provides customers with a browser-based interface for conducting fueling transactions and, potentially, accessing information from outside networks, such as the World Wide Web. Fuel dispensers support such interaction through implementing standard HTTP/HTML data transfers.
However, remote access capabilities based on the use of HTML-formatted data transmitted over an HTTP protocol interface have increasingly significant drawbacks. First, HTML is designed primarily for visual representation of data. HTML formatting combines information, possibly comprised of disparate data items, into one or more strings of text having associated formatting xe2x80x9ctags.xe2x80x9d These tags define how the corresponding data should be formatted for visual display but provide no meaning regarding the underlying data types represented by the strings of text. Remedying this first limitation of HTML is complicated by its second limitation. HTML is, to some considerable advantage, a xe2x80x9cstandards-basedxe2x80x9d Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) maintained by the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Because of HTML standards, HTML-compliant Web browsers may reliably implement common features and services. However, this standardization discourages any one group or industry from adapting HTML to its particular needs by including custom-defined tags that, for example, impart specialized data type meaning to HTML text strings.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,980,090 issued to Royal, Jr., et al., and commonly assigned with the present invention, relates to providing communication servers associated with the fuel dispensers in a fueling environment, and connecting the communication servers to a common network. This network may be a remote network, such as the Internet. The ""090 patent, and its associated pending divisional application Ser. No. 09/334,550, overcome limitations associated with HTML-based remote access and data transfer by including an embedded function in the servers associated with the fuel dispensers. This embedded function executes in response to a remote system accessing one or more specific HTML pages stored on the servers(s). Through its execution, the embedded function can provide, among other things, continuously updated parameter transfers, or remote configuration access.
Newer generation SGMLs are designed with data-type aware information transfer in mind. Data-type aware SGML tags define associated data and may be extended to define complex data structures. Thus, a device receiving data type aware SGML formatted data can easily delineate one data item from the next, and easily determine data types, based on processing the associated data type aware SGML tags. Moreover, data type aware SGML-formatted data may be conveniently formatted for visual display using a data type aware style-sheet language (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cSSLxe2x80x9d). Due to the number of existing browsers using non-data type SGMLs, it may be necessary to convert a data type aware SGML to a non-data type aware SGML using a SSL. With a data type aware SSL, data type aware SGML-based data may be translated into non-data type aware SGMLs such as HTML-based information for formatted visual display.
Thus, data type aware SGML-data transfer between a device and a remote system simplifies the processing associated with converting received data into a format usable by either the local device or the remote system. In combination with a data type aware SSL sheet, data received from the device may still be conveniently converted into non-data type aware SGMLs for visual display. These capabilities impart advantages to devices that include both non-interactive (system-to-system) remote interfacing as well as interactive (operator-based) remote interfacing.
Accordingly, the present invention includes a fuel dispenser with enhanced remote access and data transfer capabilities. The ability of the fuel dispenser to send and receive data type aware SGML-formatted data permits a remote system to efficiently transfer configuration or operating data to the device on a non-interactive basis, as well as to receive diagnostic or monitoring information. When interactive interfacing is desired, the data type aware SGML-formatted data received at the remote system may be formatted for display to an operator using data type aware SSL information received from the fuel dispenser.
The present invention provides methods and apparatus allowing a fuel dispenser to send and receive data formatted using a data type aware SGML. In an exemplary embodiment, the fuel dispenser includes a communications interface implementing an HTTP service for file transfer operations, including the transfer of data type aware SGML-based data between the fuel dispenser and a remote system. In other exemplary embodiments, the fuel dispenser may support other protocols that supplement or replace the HTTP service, including File Transfer Protocol or proprietary protocols. Data type aware SGMLs may include document definition types that permit data items to be validated against predefined definitions. Thus, data type aware SGML-based data transfers between the fuel dispenser and the remote system include the data types and relationships associated with the underlying data. In this manner, the fuel dispenser and remote system may efficiently process received information based on parsing and interpreting the data type aware SGML-based data definition tags.
Data type aware SGML-based data transfers to and from the fuel dispenser particularly benefit automated remote interaction. The fuel dispenser may implement one or more data type aware SGML-based grammars that define sets of data definitions. This allows a remote system to conveniently retrieve, monitor, or update fuel dispenser parameters using data items tagged in accordance with the defined grammar. This capability facilitates non-human data transfer and diagnostic operations conducted between the fuel dispenser and the remote system, as well as providing a convenient data format for translation into viewable information when human operator interaction is required.
A remote operator may monitor and configure the fuel dispenser using an HTML-compliant Web browser executing on the remote system. Preferably, the data type aware SGML is XML and this remote system Web browser is XML-compliant such that it formats the XML data received from the fuel dispenser for display in HTML format. Preferably, the data type aware SSL is the extensible style sheet language, and an XSL style sheet is transferred from the fuel dispenser to the XML/XSL-compliant Web browser to correctly format XML data in an HTML page. Alternatively, if the remote system does not have an XML-compliant Web browser, the fuel dispenser may include a Java applet providing XML processing capability for transfer to the remote system. In still other variations, the fuel dispenser may provide HTML-based information to the remote system, based on pre-processing its stored XML-formatted data.